


The End of a High

by ellybuhg



Category: Harry Potter/ Sherlock, Potterlock - Fandom, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, crossover - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wizards, Angst, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Drugs, Harry Potter - Freeform, Heavy Angst, M/M, Magic, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Sex, Sherlock - Freeform, Smut, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:06:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2477516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellybuhg/pseuds/ellybuhg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After what was now 23 hours, 14 minutes and 59 seconds, Sherlock was blissfully high again. Sherlock adored being high; nothing could go past the brilliant young Slytherin while he was so alert and functioning. After the high ended, though, there always came the low.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Enter: John Watson

Hogwarts’ School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was a home to many students. To most, it was a safe house, a place where they could confide and rely on each other. To some, perhaps it was just a temporary trial to a long term life style. Nonetheless, to nearly all students of the school, it was a place they loved.  
Nearly all –except one. Sherlock Holmes was not one of these many students; in fact, he rather hated the castle, and everyone in it. That’s not to say there was no good reason for it, though. Sherlock never hated the other Hogwarts students until they started hating him. Sure, Sherlock had no tact and was a bit blunt, perhaps even extremely rude, but Sherlock never said anything that wasn’t the absolute truth. Or, his interpretation of the truth. But you couldn’t blame him, even for that; someone with such an ingenious mind would surely have trouble keeping all his clever thoughts to himself.  
Alas, though, Sherlock was not especially well-liked around the castle, and with this year being his last at eighteen years old, he was just about as excited as someone could get for a train ride to their own personal Hell. It didn’t show.  
The young man boarded the Hogwarts Express with something of a blank look, his slender face solemn and slender frame graceful against the current of bustling students with luggage and rowdy animals and feelings. Sherlock moved swiftly away from the crowd of reuniting friends and lovers, and towards the back of the train, to the very last car that would remain, without a doubt, empty just for him.  
Good, he thought. Peace and quiet for a whole six hours.  
Sherlock could have done with some peace and quiet for the past six weeks, but his brother had made that impossible. Pestering Sherlock about the young man’s personal issues seemed to have become a vital part in Mycroft’s entertainment. He would first express his concern with Sherlock’s behavior; perhaps he would bring Mummy into the mix, bestowing upon Sherlock a smidgen of guilt. Then he would inquire Sherlock’s reasoning, which would more often than not receive a smug answer. At the end of every conversation, though, Mycroft would make a threat. Those annoyed Sherlock more than they actually scared him. This last one, though, was very different. Whispered into his ear just before he made the leap into Platform 9 ¾, in a very real, very venomous sort of voice, was the statement: “I will strip you of every good you’ve acquired or can acquire if you’re not clean by the time the year is up. Without hesitation, without sentiment, I will leave you in a whorl of clean-cut withdrawal and pain that you couldn’t begin to imagine.”  
That, in particular, had made Sherlock hesitate before he left his older brother without another word. The rest passed him by in a bit of a blur –the goodbyes, the hellos, the hugs that he watched everyone else receive, until he was sitting in his compartment, alone and left itching for a hit of something to calm his nerves. For a while, he refrained. In fact, he refrained for a long time. Approximately half of the trip, or if you wanted an exact number, 3 hours, 11 minutes and 22 seconds, Sherlock merely stared out the window, counting the seconds as they passed –the seconds since his last taste of the fine white powder that some might refer to as cocaine, and Sherlock referred to as fuel. What he had in his bag was not near as satisfying as cocaine. Not near as dangerous. But it would do, Sherlock thought, for the next three hours.  
According to his calculations and the schedule that there ran every year on the Hogwarts Express, he had just about twelve and a half minutes until the trolley came back around to offer him sweets. He wouldn’t be needing any. Sherlock shuffled around the cabin, ignoring the ear-curdling screech that his owl gave at the sudden movement. The young man reached over-head and retrieved one of three carry-ons, set it on the seat, and began removing its contents. Once he found the bottom of the case, Sherlock tore open the seams in the upper right-hand corner, fingering between the silk material and the leather until he found what he was looking for. It was a small package, only holding 500 milligrams of mephedrone. Two lines, if Sherlock was resourceful. He was. It would do until he could get his usual fix from the school’s provider. From his school pack, he retrieved a hard cover book and leather bookmark, and then took his seat again. On the cover, the raven-haired boy poured half the contents of the small bag, and with the bookmark he began to form a sloppy, eager line of the white powder. When he had finished, Sherlock ripped a page from the book and began to roll it into a suitable funnel.  
Finally, Sherlock thought, positioning to funnel at the beginning of the line and leaning over the book.  
After what was now 23 hours, 14 minutes and 59 seconds, Sherlock was blissfully high again. Sherlock adored being high; nothing could go past the brilliant young Slytherin while he was so alert and functioning. After the high ended, though, there always came the low. These were the times he despised –the times when his mind went out of focus and his body lagged behind, trying desperately to catch up with the events racing through his mind. Sherlock had tried other things. Sex, alcohol, etcetera, but none did it as well as cocaine. Mephedrone was a substitute. The high never got to him as well as it did with his usual love, but it was better than no high at all.  
Sherlock flared his nostrils and sniffed, blinking rapidly and successfully inhaling any remaining powder. The familiar burn plagued the insides of the sensitive skin in his nose, but by now, he didn’t mind. It had just become part of the ritual. The young man snapped out of his satisfaction momentarily to stuff the bag of goods back into its hiding place and begin to clean up his place. He was halfway through putting the contents back into his case, the book and mark still dusted with bits of white powder and sitting openly on his seat, when the door to his cabin slid open. Sherlock cast disapproving eyes at the doorway, and they only darkened a shade more at the sight.  
John Watson: foe, Gryffindor, not entirely stupid, captain of the quidditch team, beater for the quidditch team, brilliant in Defense Against the Dark Arts, not-so brilliant in Potions or Divination, watched Sherlock be sabotaged with books flying off the shelves in the library (twice) and did nothing, called Sherlock a freak (under his breath, but still). The young man had an older sister named Harriet Watson, which Sherlock knew from his many visits to the Owlery, and a father, whose name Sherlock never caught. John’s mother remained a mystery to Sherlock, though he would bet a liver and a lung that she was dead. Not that he cared much at all, or even felt relatively sorry for the boy, but he could understand why he would fail to mention something like that to anyone at this bloody school. It would get passed around like the Black Plague.  
After enduring a long moment of condemnatory silence, Sherlock turned back to cleaning up his things and said, “It must take a special sort of idiot to get lost on a train.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say –not really. What Sherlock wanted to say was ‘kindly go fuck yourself on a flagpole and never come back.’ There were no flagpoles on this train, though, so it wasn’t a possibility.   
John merely snorted, though, dark blue eyes following Sherlock’s back as the young man shuffled around the cabin. “It must take a special sort of idiot to have a hit on a train. Oh, and a school train, at that. A magic school train. Who’d’ve guessed that the smartest bloke in Hogwarts was also the stupidest?” John laughed, holding a fist up to his mouth. For a moment, he let his smile remain on that statuesque face of his, but then it dropped, and so did his hand. “So this is how you do it, then?”  
“Do what, exactly?” Sherlock snarled in response, shoving the book back into his bag without dusting off the remaining traces of white powder. That was the least of his problems. John Watson knew Sherlock’s most well-kept secret. Thus far, Sherlock’s wit had shot down any suspicion that fell upon him for this particular problem. One word from John Watson and the whole bloody school would know. “And why are you here, anyways?”  
“How you do that thing –how you read people. How you’re so aware of everything. Is it because of the drugs?” John asked, seeming genuinely curious as he looked around the cabin with something of intrigue, as though it weren’t alike every other one before it. He ignored Sherlock’s question.  
“Obviously it’s not because of the drugs,” Sherlock snapped, sending a fearsome glare over his shoulder as he continued to stuff the book into his bag. His owl screeched at John, an intruder. “You can’t improve upon something that isn’t there in the first place. Drugs expand my limitations as a human being. They allow me to put off my appetite and anything else that could hinder my mind from focusing fully on the task at hand.”   
Why was he telling this to John, again? Why did he need to explain himself to this… this playboy Gryffindor, for lack of a better name at the moment.  
John seemed to consider this for a moment, his hands dropping down to his sides, his fingers spreading, then balling back to his fists. Once, he opened his mouth, then closed it, obviously deciding against whatever it was he was going to say. Twice, and this time he said something. It was a question that Sherlock still went back to each time he thought of John—which, in the future, he would find to be a lot more than he had expected. “What exactly is the task at hand, then? Right now.”  
For a moment, Sherlock paused his movements. It was a reasonable question. Perhaps even an obvious one –but Sherlock hadn’t thought to ask it of himself. After a few seconds of silence, Sherlock latched his bag and shoved it onto the overhead. “You never answered my question: why are you here?”  
It was such a deliberate turning point, but it seemed to distract John enough from the alternate. “Curious,” he answered simply, shrugging his shoulders as he watched the owl making a racket in its cage. “You’ve got such an odd looking owl. What kind is it? I’ve never seen one like that before. Mine’s only a barn owl.”  
“He’s a long-eared. Now, if you wouldn’t mind stepping out, I would like very much to be alone,” Sherlock said, turning finally to face John Watson fully, for perhaps the first time. He’d never planned on being so close to the boy. And if he was entirely honest, he despised it more than he expected he would. They were such opposites, in every sense of the word: where John was short, Sherlock towered; where Sherlock was a coward towards other people, John blossomed.   
“Right. See you around, then,” he said indifferently, then backed out of the cabin slowly, almost hesitantly. That was the last that Sherlock saw of John Watson that day.


	2. Enter(?): Sherlock Holmes

How could John Watson’s parents have known that his grandfather was a wizard? Even by the time John had received, at age eleven, his invitation letter to Hogwarts, there had been no mention of the possible reality of magic. John’s father, Combat Medical Technician Jack H. Watson hadn’t known; Hell, CMT Watson hadn’t even known his own father. If he was being completely honest, John would bet his grandmother didn’t know either.  
That being said, John had lived a muggle life, with a (as far as he knew) muggle family. Until eleven, John hadn’t know that magic existed beyond card tricks and pulling rabbits out of hats. He couldn’t have known that such a thing actually only existed under an undetectable extensions charm. He suspected it was just there, and it was fascinating and for his entertainment. He couldn’t have known that there were actual people who lived actual lives filled with magic and wonder. Never could little John guess that there could ever be such a thing for himself. He’d never even wanted it until it was given to him. So, on his eleventh birthday, when that letter came flying through the mail slot in the plain little home of the Watsons,’ John could never have guessed what it contained. Most assuredly, he could never have guessed that it was an invitation to the world he’d always thought was just a figment of a child’s imagination.  
The magic hadn’t lasted for long. Once John’s family had been informed that Jack H. Watson’s father was, in fact, a wizard, John’s life changed drastically. His mother had an exceedingly difficult time in wrapping her head around the idea that everything she’d been taught from a young age –that magic and wizards and witches didn’t exist –was suddenly becoming a very real thing, and turned to drinks. John’s father, ever quiet, accepted the fact that this was John’s new life with the grace of someone who had been taught not to have emotions. And then there was Harry. Harriet Watson, the reserved but somewhat bull-headed older sister, had been furious. Life had never been easy for her, either. She struggled with the fact that their mother disagreed with her ‘lifestyle.’ She struggled with alcohol abuse, and she struggled with holding her relationships together because of it. Apparently, John had been blessed with this gift of magic. Apparently, John was to blame –John was lucky.  
Can you believe that? Lucky! Lucky… for what? To have caused so much grief and distress in his family? To have started a war within himself that he just couldn’t win? To ask himself every day: have I been given a golden opportunity or have I had my life ripped away?  
No, he didn’t think himself lucky.  
On the other hand, though, if something like this could tear the people he loved apart, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It was with this thought in mind that John decided to surround himself with whatever he couldn’t get at home. That’s why school was bliss. Hogwarts was heaven.  
Hell, for John Watson, took on an entirely different meaning than what it did for Sherlock Holmes. Where Sherlock’s Hell was having people, indulging in meaningless chitchat, John’s was the lack thereof. Where at home, Sherlock had attentive parents and an attentive sibling, John did not. And the bastard still acted exceedingly high-up and extraordinarily ungrateful for it. John was, if anything, angry at and jealous of Sherlock Holmes.  
It was for this reason precisely that, when John entered Sherlock’s cabin on the Hogwarts Express, it was entirely by accident. He’d been told to go all the way down and to the door on the left, and had absentmindedly turned to his right instead.  
Big mistake.  
Sherlock hadn’t seemed to mind, though, that John had just walked in on the after-action of an eighteen year old wizard snorting cocaine (or –or something like that). Annoyed, yes, obviously –but when was Sherlock not annoyed upon being interrupted by someone –anyone, really? But for him to be annoyed, rather than scared out of his mind and shooing John out immediately was simply absurd. It was absurd –of course it was, but John couldn’t say he was surprised that Sherlock hadn’t reacted in such an obvious way. Of course, in the way he had asked John to leave did not exactly leave much of his distaste for the Gryffindor to the imagination.  
The young man could not, however, shake that rush of excitement that flooded him when he saw this boy –this brilliant boy (John could admit that Sherlock was brilliant) was doing something so dangerous, so stupid. He couldn’t shake that yearning to do the same.  
John hadn’t really meant to stay, anyhow. He had just sort of… grown curious about Sherlock. Don’t get it wrong, though –Sherlock still royally pissed John off, but he was curious. He was allowed to be curious about the people he disliked. Alas, though, he had stayed, and he had left feeling just a bit more hostile to the young Slytherin than he had been before their little chat. John left the cabin, hesitating momentarily as he struggled with finding some sort of reply to such a rude request to leave, but the door had been quickly shut in his face, and he let a shudder of fury rip down his spine. The way John's hands clenched and unclenched in an attempt to calm his nerves did not go unnoticed by the Gryffindor; this sort of thing didn’t come often –but there weren’t many people who could infuriate John so well as Sherlock Holmes.  
As he turned to open the door he had initially meant to open, John realized briefly that Sherlock had avoided his question flawlessly, and had not at all answered his curiosity as to what exactly this ‘task’ was that Sherlock was snorting cocaine to accomplish.  
This thought, however, did not plague his mind for long as people, loudness, excitement, and warmth quickly surrounded him. All features that, in a normal setting, John would be lacking.  
He just couldn’t understand why someone who was blessed with so much would choose the exact opposite for himself. And he didn't understand why someone who chose that for himself would be such a bastard about it. John supposed, though, that it was just the work of people judging his ways all the time --and John couldn't say that he was innocent of that towards Sherlock Holmes. The Gryffindor hadn't always been brave, and perhaps he hadn't wanted to save Sherlock when he was being tormented by his peers. Countless times, he'd heard the word 'Freak' muttered under someone's breath as the Slytherin walked past. Countless times, John had said nothing. Once, John Watson himself had uttered the word, and if he was being honest, he didn't regret it --the arse had deserved it. 


End file.
